Barack Obama's Drug Use

This seems to be in the news again:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071212/D8TG6QUG0.html

From the article:

This has been an issue for many candidates before including “I didn’t inhale” Bill Clinton and “I was young and stupid” George W. Bush. I don’t see this as a serious liability but what do you think?

To me the question of past drug use is a liability only if it creates hypocrisy now.

One time in my ministry I had a man come to me that was worried about his daughter smoking pot. He asked basically, “I don’t want her to smoke, I really don’t, but when I was a teenager I smoked like a chimney. How do I tell her not to do something I did without being a hypocrite?”

I told him there was no problem there. You tell her what you did. You admit that what you did was wrong. You tell her you wish you had not done it and that if you could do it again you would not. You say, “I made a mistake, but you don’t have to.” The only hypocrisy comes in if you try to justify your actions and say what you did was not wrong. If you want to say, “Well that was a different time,” or, “What was right for me is not necessarily right for you.” Well then you are a hypocrite.

As long as Obama, Bush, or Clinton are willing to admit that what they did was wrong (we would say confess their sins) then I don’t see it as a liability. It is when they try to cover it up and justify their actions that they loose all credibility.